


Eyes of Gold to Embers

by consideritalljoy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:33:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25257733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consideritalljoy/pseuds/consideritalljoy
Summary: Luke encounters a Sith holocron on his way to find kyber, and has a brush with the Dark Side.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8
Collections: 2020 Star Wars Summer Fic Exchange





	Eyes of Gold to Embers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WorldCup](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorldCup/gifts).



When Leia had told him about everything that had happened with her and Han between Hoth and Cloud City, Luke had been nothing but supportive. He couldn’t say he hadn’t seen it coming—the entire Rebellion had seen it coming—and he wasn’t about to second guess Leia. 

He’d just left out a few things was all, when he told her he was happy for them both. It hardly mattered. Han’s romantic inclinations wouldn’t stop Luke from doing everything he could to break him out of Jabba’s Palace. It was, after all, Luke’s own fault that Han was swept up in all this in the first place. 

As soon as they’d ascertained that he was still alive, Luke announced that he would lead the rescue. Whatever risks there were to be taken, he’d be the one to take them. As much as possible, he’d be the focal point. No one else would lose their life to Jabba. He, Leia, Chewie, and Lando worked tirelessly to come up with some attack plan that stood a chance of actually working, but all their ideas had been longshots at best, and in all of them, one fact was true—this mission was going to take a while.

In the interim, while Leia dealt with piecing the Rebellion back together, and Chewie and Lando called in favors and ran missions trying to get a rescue plan together, Luke trained. He hadn’t gone back to Dagobah yet, and didn’t plan to until this thing with Han was over. 

He told himself that choice had nothing to do with the knowing look Yoda would give him if he returned with Han captured. 

There was another reason, though. Han wasn’t the only thing Luke had lost that day. Along with his hand, Luke had also lost his lightsaber. Which, considering what he’d learned that day, didn’t seem like such a bad thing. He’d just as soon not have his “father’s” lightsaber anymore. 

But kyber wasn’t easy to come by, and constructing a lightsaber would be a mission in and of itself.

His first step was just finding out where kyber used to be, other than Ilum, where Imperials would be swarming, and the mines would be all but depleted as kyber was exported to the Death Star’s superweapon. A few other sources existed, and Luke held out hope that the Force would guide him to the right one. 

In the end, Luke’s studies led to loading up R2 in the X-wing and flying off to Christophsis, known backwater source of kyber, hopefully too small to be of Imperial concern. 

When he came out of hyperspace, it was to an Imperial blockade. “Blast it,” Luke muttered, taking evasive action and hoping against hope that none of the star destroyers had seen him yet. 

So far so good. Luke steeled himself and pressed forward, toward the Imperial ships, and toward his only shot at a new lightsaber of his own. “R2, I’m going in close. If we get close enough, the star destroyers won’t be able to shoot at us. I’d rather deal with TIEs than destroyers.”

It was at about the halfway point that the TIEs appeared. “We’ve got company,” Luke shouted, though he didn’t really know why—R2’s scanners would pick up the enemy fighters just as easily. Trusting in the Force to guide his maneuvers, Luke dodged the fighters as much as he could without giving up the protection of close range. 

“We’ll need to get out from under these destroyers eventually,” Luke thought out loud. “But they won’t fire if they think the TIEs have a better chance of shooting us down without the risk of friendly fire. I hope.” In a few seconds, he’d be past the destroyers. “Here goes nothing,” Luke muttered, and sped toward the planet. 

The TIEs followed, but for now anyway, the destroyers were just holding position. It was also possible they’d let him get to the surface in order to follow him to whatever had drawn him there in the first place, but that was too many steps ahead for Luke to worry about right then. Six fighters turned into four as he scored a couple shots. 

They were within the system’s atmosphere now, and the shiny blueish crystal that covered the surface nearly blinded Luke as he twirled and spun to dodge Imperial fire. Up ahead looked to be the ruins of what used to be a city filled with skyscrapers, but it didn’t look too populated. 

“R2, scan ahead for signs of life,” Luke shouted. A few seconds later, R2’s scanners came back saying nothing was in the area. Not even much plant life. 

That suited Luke just fine. The skyscrapers would make for a way to lose the rest of the fighters as long as he didn’t need to worry about civilians in the crossfire. In a series of fast turns, he shot down another, and at last, seemed to lose the last three, at least for the moment. 

He needed to get out of the sky, and fast. 

Luke’s eyes fell on a crack in the crystalline surface—too small to be easily noticed, but big enough for a ship. “There!” Luke yelled to R2 as he veered to the left, making for the opening. R2 was screaming. Luke didn’t dare take his eyes off the trajectory to read the transcription, but he could guess what the problem was. No way would they fit. 

“I’m on it!” Luke answered. “I have an idea.” At the last second, just before completing his collision course with the crystal, Luke spun the ship on its side, and the X-wing lodged in the opening, mostly unscathed. The ship creaked in protest, and getting back in would be a bit tricky, but they were on the surface, and for now, that was enough. 

Luke opened the hatch and used the Force to help him down from the precarious position, and then did the same to help R2 out. As the droid beeped in appreciation, Luke absently patted the top of his dome. “No problem, buddy. How far are we from the cavern entrance?”

The research Luke had done told him that the people of Christophsis used kyber in their religious ceremonies, and had some trace amounts under the surface of the planet, too sacred to remove. The Jedi of old had left the worshippers alone, but that was back when the Jedi had Ilum. Luke was willing to bet things had changed under the Empire’s control, and if any kyber was left, it might as well be his. 

And, according to the holomap R2 presented him with, it wasn’t even quite a kilo away. “We’ve had worse landings,” Luke said. “We’re close. You stay with the ship, R2.”

R2 began buzzing and beeping worriedly. 

“I’ll be fine,” Luke assured him. “You know me. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Still the beeps. 

“Knowing some basics doesn’t actually make me fluent in astromech, you know,” Luke whined. R2 started wobbling, like he wasn’t planning on leaving the matter alone. “If you’re so sure about it, then fine. Come along, hurry up.”

R2 whizzed something that Luke didn’t pay much attention to as he turned away from the X-wing and began the sharp, rocky way to the last known source of kyber. The natural cavern wasn’t as dark as Luke expected it to be. The light of the nearest star bounced among all the crystal, lighting well into the interior of the cave before the light finally dimmed. 

At around the point where the light did begin to fade, Luke stopped in front of a strange object that looked nothing like any of the crystal or religious accustrement that surrounded him. This was a large pyramid of onyx, with garnet lines at each downward edge. At the top, the points didn’t quite connect, and the structure seemed to serve mostly as a pedestal of sorts. 

“I didn’t find anything about the worshippers of Christophsis being Dark Siders,” Luke said to R2. The nearer he got to the small box-like thing in the center, the harder it became to look away. The box understood him, somehow, not that a box ought to be able to do any such thing. 

Luke was less than a meter from the structure, bent slightly so that his eyes were level with the center shape. All around him and yet all centralized came hundreds, if not thousands of voices in the faintest of whispers. The Force was strong with this thing, whatever it was. The cavern seemed colder somehow, but that was just Luke’s imagination, he was sure. 

The outward appeal didn’t look like a Jedi device, but then again, the worshippers of Christophsis weren’t Jedi. And he didn’t really know what raw kyber looked like, really, but he knew he needed to find some, and he knew it would be strong in the Force. This structure was clearly in place for a reason. For these reasons (and possibly because the whispers encouraged the motion), with some amount of trepidation, Luke stretched out a hand. 

His fingertips collided with the glossy, cool sides of the small shape, and in the same instant, Luke fell to his knees, and R2 screamed. 

He fought to stay conscious, but the searing pain coursing through his body from the shape seemed to boil his blood and burst his arteries. Try as he might, he couldn’t move, and the pain, the misery seeped into him. 

The blue-tinted glistening cavern brightened further into a solid white, and Luke went limp. 

He was standing on lush soil. Around him, chunks of earth moved in slow rotations in the air, with one even housing a waterfall cascading down its side into the valley below. The nearest he’d ever seen to it was Yavin 4, but it certainly wasn’t that. 

Wherever he was, the Force was strong here. Stronger than he’d ever felt it—even than the tree on Dagobah, where the Force had given him that vision of Vader. The power flowed throughout him, easing the aches where once pain had coursed. 

“So at last, the son of Anakin Skywalker comes to us,” said a lithe figure appearing from formless shadows in front of him. The woman’s hood obstructed a clear view of her face, but her voice rasped with a kind of irony. 

“How do you know who I am?” Luke asked. 

“The Force knows,” the woman replied. “When you placed your hand upon the holocron, you became a conduit for the power trapped within. That power, in most, would simply end in the destruction of the body. In you…” she trailed off. “Well, in you, it created this.” She gestured widely to the vista around them both. “Not many among the living catch a glimpse of Mortis.”

“I’m not familiar with that system,” Luke said, narrowing his eyes. 

“It isn’t a system; it’s not even really a place, and you’re not even really here, and neither am I. In the Force, all are one.” 

“How do I find the kyber?” Luke pressed. 

“The token you seek is a trifle in comparison to the mysteries Mortis can reveal to you, should you open yourself to my teaching and accept your true nature.”

There was something off about this woman, Luke decided. He didn’t like the shadows that seemed to follow her, even in the lush, bright region they were both standing in. “That structure wasn’t of Christophsis, was it,” he said more than asked. 

“Insightful, very insightful,” the woman said in a flat tone that left Luke fairly certain her response was sarcastic. “It was of us.” Again, she gestured around her, but this time, everywhere her hand pointed to seemed to shrivel up and die, turning to a husk of what it was. 

Luke stepped back and raised an arm to protect his core. Without a lightsaber, he was all but defenseless, and he didn’t seem to even have his blaster anymore. “You’re a Sith, aren’t you?”

“The Sith betrayed me,” the woman snarled. “Their order is esoteric now. There are other approaches to the Force that are less… distasteful than either the Sith or the Jedi.”

“You’re neither?” Luke asked. He wasn’t aware a person could use the Force without being on one side or the other. After what Yoda and Ben had said on Dagobah about not saving his friends, and considering neither of them had told him who Darth Vader was before letting him fly off to confront him, a third option was looking better and better. Luke stood down, and furrowed his eyebrows. “How can that be?”

“There are hundreds of Force adept traditions throughout the galaxy, but I’m not surprised you were kept in the dark. It isn’t a reality the Jedi would tell you of.” 

“They’ve kept me in the dark about a lot lately,” Luke admitted. He stepped closer to the woman. “What tradition are you from?”

“In life, I was a part of the coven of Dathomir, protected by the great Mother Talsan and surrounded by my sisters. The Jedi and the Sith teach detachment. My coven urged community, that the collective may be strong. With them, I was far stronger than I ever was as a Sith’s toy. I was able to protect the ones I loved rather than sacrificing them for some ‘greater purpose.’”

Luke cast his eyes to the grass at his feet, and his face flushed. He’d sworn to become a Jedi mostly because of his father and Ben, but Ben had lied to him, and his father… Luke shivered. What was the point of harnessing power if not to protect the people he cared about? With power like that, he could free Han, and maybe even defeat Vader once and for all. 

Luke knelt, letting the soft ground dampen his knees as he looked up at this shadowy answer to so many of his gravest fears. “How do I follow in your footsteps?” he asked of the woman. 

Her lips curled into an unsettling smile, but even so, she bid him rise and placed a hand on his shoulder. So close, Luke could finally see her eyes—a color the Jedi would have called a sickly yellow, but which to Luke appeared more like a dull gold. “Take the holocron from the pedestal, and take it with you. I will be able to contact you through this device. The Force is the pathway to many abilities the Jedi would keep from you, but with my help, you will rise above both wayward orders.”

“I will do whatever you ask,” Luke told her. With that, the vision vanished, and with it the strange realm called Mortis. In its place, a crystalline cavern, an onyx pedestal, and an R2 unit who wouldn’t stop talking. 

“I’m fine, R2. Really,” Luke tried to assure the astromech, his hand still holding the object—holocron—gingerly. “And you’re going too fast for me to understand you.”

The beeps slowed down considerably. 

“And now you’re just making fun of me,” Luke whined.

* * *

A chirp escaped R2 before he caught a glimpse of Luke’s face. Everything else was the same, as if nothing at all had happened, but in place of Luke’s blue eyes—heirloom of his father—was yellow… perhaps another heirloom. R2 drew upon every other time in his memory banks where he’d come face to face with eyes like those, and he didn’t like what he saw.   
_Sith._

* * *

Luke turned away from R2 and back to the holocron, and, with the gentle care of a parent holding a newborn, removed it from the pedestal. A red strain of lightning cracked within the empty space where the holocron had been, and the small shape fit neatly in Luke’s palm. He closed his fingers around it, and let the cool sensation of untapped power flow throughout him. 

“I had a vision,” he explained to R2. “I met someone who’s going to show me a way to use the Force other than being a Jedi and without being a Sith. A way to protect them all without giving them up.” He thought of Han, still in carbonite, a prisoner of Jabba. If Yoda hadn’t tried to stop him, would Luke have gotten there in time? He squeezed his eyes shut. “I can make it all right,” he said to R2. 

For some reason, that didn’t seem to make the droid feel any better. Luke’s anger flared as he stood back up. “You’re not getting it. Save everyone. Take down the Empire. Kill Vader, and the Emperor. Save Han. I can do all of it. Now, come on. I still need the kyber.”

R2 stayed put even as Luke ventured forward. Luke turned back and scowled. “Well, come on now. You’re the one who wanted to come in the first place.”

* * *

He’d wanted to come in the first place because the day Anakin destroyed it all, R2 had been told to stay with the ship. He didn’t want to repeat the history still locked in his memory banks. If he changed one of the variables, like where he was during it all, he predicted that could change the outcome. 

Somehow, though, Luke was following his father’s path even still. The behavior Luke was exhibiting was like nothing R2 had seen from him in the past, but it matched Anakin’s behavior much more closely. 

Organic memory was so fickle. Luke didn’t even know what trap he was falling into. The past was encoded in R2’s memory, but it all had happened just moments before Luke was born, so he had no way of knowing. 

R2 completed the calculation. There was one way Luke could be made to know. 

R2 reached into his memory bank and selected the right file, and displayed it on the holo in front of him. 

It was up to Luke to know what he was looking at, and what it meant.

* * *

R2 was showing him a landing pad for some reason. Luke’s anger boiled over, and he stomped closer to the droid, ready to push it along himself if that’s what it took to get this mission moving. 

As he got closer, something about the holo gave him pause. The ship on the landing pad was a Naboo model, a luxury vessel, but an outdated one. There were two figures standing outside of it talking to each other: a man dressed in dark Jedi robes, and a woman with long braided hair. 

“I was so worried about you,” the woman was saying. “Obi-Wan told me terrible things.”

It was the reference to Obi-Wan that caught Luke’s attention, and he stopped short. 

“What things?” asked the man. 

“He said you turned to the dark side…” the woman stumbled over words, already in tears. “That you killed younglings...”

“What is this?” Luke asked R2. When he started listening in again, the woman was shaking her head and saying, “Anakin, all I want is your love.”

Anakin. “My father,” Luke breathed. 

Anakin—Vader—was leaning in closer with a smile that seemed somehow wrong, as if manic. “Love won't save you, Padme. Only my new powers can do that.”

Luke’s head was spinning. Padme? Could this woman be his mother? Luke struggled to make out more of the holomemory. 

“Come away with me,” Padme pleaded. “Help me raise our child. Leave everything else behind while we still can.”

So she’d been pregnant—pregnant with him. Luke listened to Anakin’s plans for his future with his wife, overthrowing the Chancellor, who, Luke assumed, was now the Emperor, and definitely not overthrown… and the woman, Padme, only backed away, quaking. 

“I don't know you anymore,” she cried. “Anakin, you're breaking my heart. You’re going down a path I can't follow.”

“Because of Obi-Wan?” Anakin asked, anger rising in his features. 

“Because of what you've done… what you plan to do. Stop, stop now. Come back! I love you.”

At that moment, Anakin raised his eyes back to the ship, and his gaze hardened. Looking back at Padme, his face contorted into rage and he shouted out, “Liar!”

Padme turned to see what Luke assumed must be a much younger Ben Kenobi standing on the cruiser. “No!” she screamed breathlessly. 

“You brought him here to kill me!” Anakin yelled. 

“No!” Padme pleaded. “Anakin. I swear. I—”

Anakin raised a hand, and Padme clutched her throat. It was one of Vader’s signature moves. Had this been the first time he’d used it? 

Luke watched the last moments of Vader and Ben’s argument before lightsabers were drawn, and Padme lay crumpled on the ground.

“Why are you showing me this?” Luke asked R2, and the astromech said nothing, but Luke was already on his knees, eyes brimming with tears. The churning emotions in his gut morphed into anger. “And why didn’t you show me this before?”

The astromech didn’t respond. Luke raised a hand, about to send the droid crashing against a crystalline wall, but he stopped. What was he doing? The arm dropped to his side, and the holocron, still gripped in the other, fell from his loosened grasp. “What have I done?” Luke whispered hoarsely. 

He’d never considered before _how_ his father had gone from Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader, but, thinking back, Luke had really just assumed that Vader had been underneath Anakin all along. That the daring Jedi knight was a lie, and Vader was the truth. But that wasn’t how it had happened, was it? The man he saw in that holo recording was desperate. He’d gone too far, and he’d go on to do terrible things, but that wasn’t where he’d started. 

Anakin Skywalker fell to the Dark Side because he’d tried to possess his beloved, and couldn’t bear to let go.

Was that what he was doing, with Han, with his friends, with the Rebellion? Was this why Yoda and Ben had so earnestly told him not to go to their rescue? Anakin’s attempt to save Padme ended in being the one to harm her, maybe even end her life. 

Through the holocron, he’d thought he’d found a third option, but that way still lay attachment. 

Had it really been so wrong of Anakin to love Padme? Their love was the only reason he was alive at all. 

_Love won’t save you._ Anakin’s words rang in Luke’s ears. _Only power can save._ Only the Dark Side didn’t save—it destroyed, just as it had destroyed all of their lives. 

_And sacrifice Han and Leia?_ Luke had snapped on Dagobah. 

_If you honor what they fight for? Yes._

Luke hadn’t known what that meant at the time. He thought it was callous, and cruel, and wrong. He hadn’t seen the love in it. 

The Jedi were against attachment, not love. Attachment was wanting to possess the things you love, even at the expense of everything the beloved really held dear. Love itself… that was the real sacrifice. 

The anger that had welled inside Luke fled, and he slumped over. Had he looked in a mirror, he would have seen the gold in his eyes dwindle to embers, replaced with bright blue. The holocron was enshrouded in a dark crimson mist, and a shriek that sounded like a thousand voices emanated from it. A crack of blue lightning erupted from it, and the voice of the Emperor. So that was who had placed it there, so prominently, right where any Jedi who went looking for kyber would find it. The holocron still called to him. Luke only kicked it away. 

Love without attachment. He’d free Han, and the reunion would bring him a shiver of joy, and Han would reunite with Leia, and Luke would honor that choice. To be a Jedi was to love through the pain of loss, not to love to the point of loss. 

He rose, and, with trembling hands, dusted himself off. “Come on, R2. We still need to find that crystal.”

The kyber lay further down the cavern, and Luke had to use the full extent of his Force abilities to both find and retrieve the crystal he needed. It called to him, not at all like the holocron had, but as something more pure, and deeper. Not a manmade vessel of the Force, but the Force itself, it seemed—or perhaps a part of his own life force, simply calling back to him. 

This lightsaber would be none but his. For a quick second, Luke gazed at the clear nugget in his hand, reflecting light in every direction, before he stuffed it in his pocket and rushed for the exit. The Empire would be on his heels, and he had no time to waste. 

Luckily, his ship was still where he’d left it, and escaping the Imperials was tricky, but nothing Luke hadn’t done before. 

When he was finally safe in hyperspace, Luke took the kyber crystal back out, and squinted, holding it up at different angles. He’d been surprised enough to find it colorless when he’d expected kyber to be blue, like his father’s lightsaber, and like Ben’s. It had gained a tint after spending time in his pocket, it seemed. Only it still wasn’t blue. It was green. 

Something about the shade had Luke smiling to himself as he looked at it. The crystal, down to the color, was an extension of himself. He’d be a Jedi like his father before him and like the mentors he’d known, yes, but he’d be a Jedi in his own right. His own person. Not prone to the mistakes of his lineage. Green, like new life.

**Author's Note:**

> As you can probably tell, I took "Come Join the Murder" as a prompt. I ended up really liking the song, so thanks for the rec!


End file.
